Digital Marketing Techniques that are trending this year

We are a few days away from calling the shots for the month of February. However, this case may be it is safe to say that 2017 is still fresh and there is still time for digital marketers to up their game in the ever changing trends of the digital marketing world.

These trends are constantly growing as companies, industries, SMEs are researching new ways to better their competitors in the game which is accompanied by new technologies and tools.

This means that strategies and methods that might have worked last year might not work or will have little effect in the online marketing world.

It is in this light that I carve this post to take a flash back on the digital trend which was predicted by experts will be fundamental in online marketing this year.

Top Digital Marketing Techniques for 2017

Content Marketing

Content is king, and it is utilising its authority in the biggest way. This king has been on the list of digital marketing trends for up to five years now and it is still waxing stronger by the day. However unlike before content is now focused more on strategy and target audience rather than a broad audience. According to T. Lista of Search Engine Watch,

“Content is not created anymore to reach a broad audience, but rather a specific target group, as this may be more useful for brand trying to stand out from its competitors.”

This time story telling will be the main force of every content marketer as a good story keeps the audience engaged.

“Story telling and engaging with your audience will be a key part of content marketing .Good storytelling in business is more than just a case study, blog, or updating social media” - M. Templeman

Backlinko further proves to us that quality and content length still make decisions in Google search engine page ranking. Seems people love long articles after all.

Mobile

The mobile revolution is growing stronger. This trend has been on the list for 3 years now and search engines are now taking it more seriously as the mobile responsive website is taking over search pages now. With the increased use of smartphones in accessing the internet, mobile marketing and mobile apps will grow this year cos last year stats put it that there was more internet traffic from mobile users than desktops. In other words, business owners will have to optimise their website to fit the mobile screen so as to increase engagement.

Blogging

Blogging has also been on the list for a couple of years now and is waxing stronger as a lot of businesses are into content creation now. Owning a mobile optimised blog is now a key to the kingdom according to experts.

T. Luibarets of Think creative posited that 81 percent of U.S. trust information and advice from blogs and the numbers will increase in 2017.

Hubspot’s L. Jones noted that in 2016, 60 percent of marketers focused on blogging and in 2017 there will be an increased focus.

Also, C. Hopkins from LinkedIn pointed out that 69 percent of companies cited that their top two marketing priorities for 2017 is increasing their SEO and rankings and also focusing on blog content creation.

So with these prove, there is no doubt that we will see a lot of new bloggers this year.

Social Media

We have to give it to social media platforms, they have proved very useful for digital marketers for a couple of years now.

Social media has been the top driver of sales and traffic for website and industries. Brands are constantly using social media tools to not only increase their reputation.

With increased usage comes competition and the need to spend money to meet your target audience a trick Facebook and Instagram are currently using very well as they now monetize their ads to help brands reach a large number of their target audience. However, the video is the key in social media advertising.

Current reports by experts from smart insight reveal that Facebook and twitter are currently declining in social media marketing usage while snap chat, Instagram and Pinterest are increasing in usage.

Video

ah! This one should have been placed under content marketing you may say, but sincerely it really should stand on its own to show the important role video plays now in digital marketing.

The use of video is rising and brands are taking advantage.

According to the President of Convince and Convert and author of Hug Your Haters, Jay Baer;

“as more and more brands embrace story telling, they will shift the nature of those story from fiction to non-fiction. The rise of live video, behind the scene content, and true brand journalism will begin to tip the story telling balance from glossy ‘best foot-forward’ to documentary - style realism”

Live video is on the loose and is the new best thing on the net now. Twitter via periscope, Facebook, Instagram and snap chat have all rolled out their live videos. Here is some expert opinion to further convince you that video marketing has come to stay at least for now.
K. Smith from Brandwatch says

“as social network fight to keep people online, this push into live video streaming makes sense. With the priority that Facebook gives to video and the reduce organic search, we should see experimenting with this new format in 2017”

K. Clay of Two Rivers Marketing convinced us more of the rise of video in the digital marketing world -

“one third of online activity is spent watching videos, and video ad spend will increase by double digit annually at-least until 2020. Facebook is the media darling of videos, but YouTube still dominates in terms of total hours watched per day.”

SEO and User Experience

google is constantly creating new ways to rank a website on their search engines based on user experience, mobile friendliness, location and contact details and also use of schema.

Early this year they did a test run for mobile indexing for a website to show that they are taking the mobile adoption seriously.

Websites must also be navigation friendly, making it easy for users to move through their inventory. Locality is becoming more important as businesses are striving to a more local clientele base.

Google has begun to penalise a website that uses pop-ups.

Big data/ analytics

Big data as to do with marketing analytics which businesses use in measuring the outcome of their marketing strategies. This includes applications that provide marketing insight, consumer insights and predictive data which brands and business owners use in determining their success.

It can be traditional and digital, structured, unstructured and multi-structured

Big data is now becoming important to business owners who with the data from such analytic tools like Google Analytics, SERP rank, Facebook page insight, and several others, give them opportunities to monitor sales, conversion rates and the success of their campaign strategies.

With big data, business owners are able to monitor customer behaviours and tailor their marketing tactics in line with such behaviours.

Marketing automation

Though marketing can't be automated, marketing automation refers to a set of tools or software used by digital marketers to automate their marketing actions.

This is now an increasing technique used by businesses as a way to increase sales and nurture leads into customers.

As at 2016, Webbiquity revealed that 63 percent of B2B marketers used marketing automation tools to grow faster than their competitors. We are hoping to see that increase this year